On January 8,
the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition to review the 8th Circuit Court of
Appeals' decision in Sprint
Communications v. Lozier (2017). This leaves standing the 8th Circuit’s
conclusion, based on Section 251(g) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, that
federal law did not preempt state authority to regulate nonnomadic, intrastate long-distance VoIP calls. The overall import of
the case is decidedly narrow. As the 8th Circuit recognized in Lozier, the FCC's Connect American Fund Order (2011) explicitly superseded the
pre-1996 Act access charge regime that was at issue in the case. Thus, the
decision in Lozier was essentially
limited to the matter of intrastate access charges incurred by Sprint between
2009 and 2011 – when the CAF Order
was adopted.
My October 2017
blog post, "The
Case for Keeping VoIP Free from Legacy Regulation" discusses a pending
decision by the 8th Circuit that could be far more consequential for the future
of IP-based services. For further background and insight, also see the April
2013 Perspectives from FSF Scholars
paper by Professor and FSF Board of Academic Advisors member Daniel Lyons: "The
Challenge of VoIP to Legacy Federal and State Regulatory Regimes."
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